This application makes reference to, incorporates the same herein, and claims all benefits accruing under 35 U.S.C xc2xa7119 from an application Entitled Method For Controlling Program Guide For Displaying Broadcast Program Title earlier filed in the Korean Industrial Property Office on Oct. 28, 1998, and there duly assigned Serial No. 98-45344 by that Office.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for controlling a program guide of television broadcasts, and more particularly, to a program guide method for displaying the title of a TV program currently being broadcast on a TV screen.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to identify the programs to be broadcast on the respective TV channels and the broadcast time thereof, conventionally, viewers had to refer to a program guide occasionally broadcast on the corresponding channel or a printed television programming guide. However, when a printed television program guide or a broadcast program guide is not available, the viewer does not know the broadcast time of a desired program.
To address the shortcoming, in recent years, there has been a technique of inserting schedule data of programs of the respective channels into TV signals transmitted from broadcast stations. Meanwhile, the TV signals are received on the receiving side, and then the program schedule data is displayed on a television screen, so that the viewer is informed of the scheduled programs broadcast on the respective channels. Examples of displayed program guides are found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,886,690 to Russel L. Pond entitled Program Schedule User Interface and U.S. Pat. No. 5,892,498 to Connie T. Marshall et al. entitled Interactive Scroll Program Guide.
However, since the list of program titles is displayed by channel and broadcast time by simply displaying the schedule data on the screen, the viewer must check the broadcast time of each program in order to identify a program currently being broadcast on the respective channels.
The present invention provides a method for controlling a program guide by which a viewer can easily identify the title of a program currently being broadcast among program titles of the respective channels to select the channel on which a desired program is broadcast.
Accordingly, to achieve the above objective, there is provided a method for controlling a program guide for displaying TV programs being broadcast currently on the respective channels on a TV screen by receiving program schedule data transmitted from the respective TV broadcasting stations, the method including selecting a program guide mode and displaying the titles of programs being broadcast on the respective channels on the screen, checking whether there is a program having started before the current time among the programs of the respective channels, selecting a program ending after the current time among the programs having started before the current time, and displaying the title of the program selected in the selecting step on the screen in a discernible manner.
Also, in the displaying step, the title of the program currently being broadcast is highlighted.